James/Regulus

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Pairing
Pairing: James Potter/Regulus Black
Alternative name(s): Jegulus, Jamulus, Starchaser, Sunseeker
Gender category: Slash
Fandom: Harry Potter
Canonical?: No
Prevalence:
Archives: https://regulusjames.livejournal.com/
Other:
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Jegulus is the slash ship between James Potter and Regulus Black in the fandom Harry Potter.

Canon

They do not directly interact on-page in canon. They canonically attended Hogwarts together for several years, from 1972 or 1973 to 1978. Regulus’s older brother, Sirius Black, was during this time one of James’s roommates and best friends. Both Regulus and James canonically die within a few years of each other (the former in 1979, the latter in 1981), defying Voldemort in the first wizarding war.

Fandom

Pre-2020

Some of the earliest James/Regulus fics date back to 2005 on LiveJournal[1].

I am a huge, huge, huge, Regulus/James shipper and have found NO fan fiction and NO fan art for it. I'm hoping that by posting it up here, someone will read it and be drawn to it.

Preface to Come What May: A Regulus/James Fic by LiveJournal user reggieblack dated 2005-10-29.

The regulusjames LiveJournal community was active from between 2008 to 2012, seeing both fanart and fanfic contributions. The regulus-fest on LiveJournal ran in 2010 and received three James/Regulus out of 15 fics, the second most common ship behind Barty/Regulus with 4 submissions.

From the mid-2010s to 2019, the ship continued to see sporadic activity of a handful of fics a month on AO3[2].

2020 and beyond

2020 marked the start of a period of high interest in both Harry Potter Marauders era and this ship specifically; a sharp increase in the number of James/Regulus works in early 2021[2] followed the surge in popularity of the Marauders era longfic All The Young Dudes in late 2020. (It is worth mentioning that All The Young Dudes does not contain James/Regulus but rather the canon pairing James/Lily and Regulus is a fairly minor character, so any relation of these two trends is likely to be indirect rather than direct.)

For further evidence of its meteoric rise, James/Regulus was the #17 most popular ship on AO3 in 2022[3] and #43 most popular ship on tumblr in 2022[4], a new entrant on both these lists.

Possible reasons for post-2020 popularity

Fans on TikTok accounted for a significant part of this rise in popularity, in particular a “joke ship week” in March 2021.

Comment by (deleted user) on Where did Jegulus (James Potter/Regulus Black) come from? posted 04 Apr 2023 on r/hpfanfiction, Archived version

In 2016, pre ATYD, there were 4 fairly active jegulus authors (one of them wrote The Devils White Knight) but it kind of disappeared in 2018 when a bunch of the authors deleted/ orphaned works.

After ATYD blew up on social media in 2020 people made joke ships weeks on TikTok and jegulus was one of them in march 2021 and because people fan cast Timothy Chalamet for Regulus and Aaron Taylor Johnson for James edits of them blew up because they were easy to view together.

Shortly following all the edits from ‘Jegulus Week’ Choices by messermoon was posted on ao3 end of march. It got popular really quickly because people liked the dynamics and the writing. People would make constant edits to quotes of the fic, some with upwards of 100k likes which got people more invested in the pairing.

Comment by (deleted user) on r/hpfanfiction.

Substack essay by rcwrae, Archived version

2020 - covid. tiktok explosion. algorithmic social media strengthens its grip on society. we fall deeper into the trap of constructing our identities based on our consumption of Content. marauderstok gains popularity, thanks to the already-existing popularity of harry potter combined with the desire to build something separate from jkr combined with, like…the virality of atyd. 2021. by chance, somebody starts jegulus week. more new fans talking about jegulus. key jegulus fanfictions start to go viral on tiktok. a new wave of fans is drawn to jegulus thanks to the dramatic appeal of the ship and the intriguing canon information there to build off.

rcwrae on substack

Tumblr reblog by plantfeline on tumblr, in response to above essay., Archived version

i especially got a lot from this read as i was in the discord server that came up with jegulus week on tiktok back in 2021, with about 20 other people. there was a small explosion of other ship weeks in the little group i was part of and then the server died and a fair few of those people either deleted tiktok or stopped posting about hp.

plantfeline on tumblr

Two posts by narcissa-black-supermacy on tumblr, Archived version

Please kill the idea that Jegulus is a "new" ship.

[...] I’m not arguing that Jegulus was nearly as popular before, but it BOTHERS me when people talk like it was created by Tiktok 1 year ago when there are metas, fandom events, analysis, fests, fics, fanarts dating over TWENTY years back, created by thousands of people across the fandom.

“It started as a crackship and tiktok blew it up” - NO. Wrong.

J/R is rooted in hundreds of character metas and canon-reliant analysis - it’s a result of 20+ years of fandom history and work [...]

narcissa-black-supermacy on tumblr

Fandom controversies

Jegulus Writers Strike / No Post November 2022

Jegulus Writers Strike / No Post November 2022, Archived version: In November 2022, there was a call for Jegulus writers and shippers to refrain from posting any Jegulus content for a month to protest abuse and harassment within the fandom. A number of writers also chose to withhold posting for other ships during the month of November; Sirius Black fest, for example, which typically begins posting on Nov 3 (the character's birthday), delayed posting in 2022 until Dec 1[5].

Has anyone seen 'No Post November' coming from the Jegulus fandom? What are your thoughts? Post on r/hpfanfiction by celestemagnolia on 28 Oct 2022, Archived version

I went digging last night to find what I could and it just seems so...childish? That might be the best word. It's not okay to give/receive death threats over writing, even if we disagree with what's said. But at the same time, it seems to be partly based in personal beef between some Jegulus writers and the greater Marauder fandom and I just don't care.

Comment by celestemagnolia on reddit

I echo others in saying that I don’t really understand how this “strike” is supposed to achieve anything. As an outsider and someone who adamantly filters Jegulus out of her search options, I think Jegulus got way too big way too fast. And it attracted its own sort of cult following outside of the general HP fandom even outside the general Marauders fandom. I think a lot of the fanbase and authors are really young, and really passionate. Which is great, but can also result in a lot of immature behaviour that escalates due to the mixture of perceived anonymity of the internet, a culture of parasocial relationships amongst authors and fans, and mob mentality. I don’t blame the authors for needing a break, but I also think the idea of a strike is naive. As others have said Jegulus is extremely new, and I think a complete month of no Jegulus content is far more likely to lose their audience then teach trolls a lesson.

Comment by Ill_Understanding826 on reddit

It’s in response to a few (adult) jegulus authors getting harassed on their socials by teenagers who think that authors shouldn’t write smut about minors (jegulus during hogwarts era basically). The idea of the strike is [...] that if authors are being harassed out of writing entirely, there will be no content left to enjoy.

Comment by crystalclear243 on reddit

There are already posts on tumblr about keeping an eye on people who don't join because they're not part of the community. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of backlash because I'm getting 'if you're not with us you're against us' vibes

Comment by LadyCryptid on reddit

BNF departure in May 2023

In May 2023, zeppazariel / mayzarbewithyou, the author of several of the most popular fics for this pairing on AO3, hid their works and deleted their tumblr account[6], to much fan response:

Post by femme--de--lettres on tumblr on 07 May 2022, Archived version

really interesting to me that in response to zar saying he was stepping back from the fandom and would prefer his works remain inaccessible, i’ve seen three/four responses:

1. omg this is awful for me (usually with a comment about how they were reading something and hadn’t finished it)

2. i totally understand zar’s decision, this is really unfortunate that he felt this way

3. i’m so confused, what did the fandom DO to him

4. people explicitly going against what was in his post that said he was making his works inaccessible by sharing links to it via google drive. after he’d taken them down.

femme--de--lettres on tumblr

Common Fandom Tropes

  • Sunshine x grumpy, in which James is the former and Regulus is the latter
  • Canon compliant angst, unhappy ending with major character death
  • Hogwarts era
  • AU canon divergence
  • Transmasc/trans man Regulus
  • Desi James Potter
  • Non-magical AU
  • Raising Harry

Fanworks

Fanart

  • James and Regulus with baby Harry by Betwndyingstars (twitter) (tumblr)
  • Maybe it’s the first pride month for Regulus 🏳‍🌈✨☀️ by emeriart (tumblr) (twitter)
  • Domestic lads (featuring Regulus with top surgery scars) by industrations (tumblr) (instagram)
  • t4t jegulus! by Betwndyingstars (twitter) (tumblr)

Fanfic

Meta

Communities and Resources

References

  1. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20220815002337/https://reggieblack.livejournal.com/
  2. ^ a b https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch/?filter=James%20Potter/Regulus%20Black
  3. ^ https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/110618514
  4. ^ https://fandom.tumblr.com/post/702448526072987648/ships-if-its-not-canon-at-least-theres-always
  5. ^ https://archive.ph/wip/I1NKe
  6. ^ https://archive.ph/jpvYr
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